‘Some of my authors even offered to read my drafts’: Bill Clegg in London, September 2015.
Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

Bill Clegg is a leading New York literary agent and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict As a Young Man and Ninety Days, which describe respectively his addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol and his painful return to sobriety. His intricate and acclaimed first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, tells the story of the emotional aftermath of a catastrophic fire in a small Connecticut town in which four people from the same family are killed the night before a wedding, and is on the longlist for the 2015 Man Booker prize.

When you’re writing a memoir, you have a life to work with: that’s your clay. With a novel, you have to make the clay

How long did it take you to admit to yourself that you were writing a novel?A long time. If you’d asked me if I was writing a novel, I would have said “no”. I sort of backed into it. The impulse came when I was writing the first memoir. That brought me back to the place [Sharon, in Litchfield County, Connecticut] where I grew up, to those rooms and those streets. I had this interest in where I was from, in all the class collisions there; I have this longing for it, but one complicated by a lot of painful memories. The first three words of the second chapter – “She will go” – just materialised. Somebody was leaving a town like the one I grew up in. I didn’t know why, or where she was going. The catastrophe came into view before I had an overall sense of the story. I was interested in how stories happen in a small town, in the way that memory is collective and in how blame is assigned.

I was hit by a car when I was 13, and the rumour was immediately that I had been playing chicken with the car with my best friend Kenny in front of the Nutmeg Pantry, which was the only shop in Sharon. In fact, the guy who hit me was inebriated. But there are people in that town even now who still think that story is true. [He laughs]. The injustice of it drives me mad.

Did writing a novel make you feel more vulnerable than publishing your memoirs?Yes. The memoirs just came out like streaks of lightning; I raced to catch up with them. This took seven years. When you’re writing a memoir, however experimental, you have the chronology of a life to work with: that’s your clay. But with a novel, you have to make the clay. Most of what I wrote in the first three years isn’t in the book, but it was critical in terms of building a world. I read some of the sections out loud to my husband first of all. It was nerve-racking, but I love him and he loves me, and it was a safe place to do that.

How have your authors responded to the book?They’ve all been incredibly supportive. Some even offered to read drafts. A large number of my clients have been with me through many years and through various levels of health on my part, so there is a level of support there. But they also know where my true heart lies, which is with their work and the agency. That will never change.

Has the way you read their work changed because of it? I’m a softer touch now. I really appreciate what it takes to create a book. I understand the loneliness that it involves and the excitement and the vulnerability: I especially identify with that. I was surprised by how vulnerable publication felt. I’ve seen things written, and felt misunderstood or attacked. Of course you can decide to not look at all – but good luck to you if you do, because there’s always the friend who sees you at dinner and says indignantly: “I just can’t believe they said that about you!”

What does being longlisted for the Booker prize mean?My experience of it as an agent is that it’s one of the few prizes that matter. I fully respect its power, and I’m just completely shocked and incredibly grateful. And yes, I totally understand the way some people feel about the fact that it has been opened to American writers. If I were British, I would feel just as protective. It’s not an easy thing to sell serious novels at a certain level. Writers depend on prizes.

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It’s hard, sitting here beside you, to match the successful novelist and agent with the man we read about in your memoirs. Does he feel like another person now?No, and if that does start to happen, I make sure to actively engage with those memories. This [he points to himself] is 44 years and a lot of harm and pain and work. I stay engaged with other alcoholics and addicts, always, and seek their help and offer it, and that’s the nature of my recovery, which is ongoing. I’m surprised I’m here. I tried to kill myself in a hotel room when I was 33. I didn’t intend to survive that. When I woke up in the hospital, I was first disappointed and then, soon after, incredibly grateful, and from that point forward I’ve tried not to squander the gift that I got. If you’re an addict, you have always to be on your guard, and not only when your father dies [Clegg was leaving his father’s funeral when he heard his book had been longlisted for the Booker]. If there’s a particularly beautiful sunset, you have to be on your guard; if the waiter looks at you the wrong way, you have to be on your guard. It’s not like graduating from college. It’s an always thing.

Is writing a balm?My writing is the lucky result of being sober. The work I do in recovery is the balm. I don’t see writing as therapy. Even the memoirs weren’t therapy. I don’t think of literary novels as self-help documents, although literature undoubtedly saved my life when I was young, enabling me to disappear into all manner of stories, to recognise feelings that I felt alone in.

What about the future of books? You see it from both sides. Are you anxious, or hopeful?It’s totally appropriate to be anxious about the future of things you care about, especially in a shifting world. But I’ve every expectation that literature will continue to exist. There was so much anxiety around ebooks, but they’ve brought a new appreciation for the physical object. If people love something, they want the book so they can hold it to them. As an agent, it’s business as usual. I experience a lot of anxiety and have a great sense of responsibility when I’m selling a debut, but that was always the case. It’s no harder now. All those doomy predictions about the failure of big publishing… some of the best writing I’ve ever encountered was published in the last few years. So I remain hopeful.